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Archive for the 'PR Spin' Tag

On Whitacre taking on GM…

Wednesday, June 10th, 2009

Yesterday’s announcement that Ed Whitacre would take the reigns of “the new GM” (GMGMQ) kind of caught me by surprise. Here’s a snip from the press release:
“The appointment of Ed Whitacre as chairman represents a very auspicious beginning for the New GM,” said GM Chairman Kent Kresa. “We look forward to working with him to [...]

On M&A math…

Tuesday, June 9th, 2009

Whenever a deal is announced — and a bunch of them have been lately — there’s the inevitable press release that talks about synergies and how the deal is going to enhance shareholder value. Indeed, that’s pretty much a mandatory sentence.
But things don’t always turn out as planned when it comes to M&A, or, quite [...]

AIG: Blame the negative publicity…

Friday, May 8th, 2009

Journalists really can’t catch a break. The daily tales of more layoffs, unpaid furloughs and magazine closings (including Portfolio, which ran a monthly footnoted column). But now there’s this: those darn journalists are responsible for the problems at AIG (AIG).
We’ll borrow a line from our friend, Jeff Matthews: we are not making this up! [...]

Chesapeake does some ’splainin…

Friday, May 1st, 2009

Ever since, Cheseapeake Energy (CHK) filed its preliminary proxy last week, there’s been lots of stories — here’s one from Business Week — noting just how well paid Chairman and CEO Aubrey K. McClendon is. Those stories are likely to continue since earlier today, the Associated Press came out with its list of the highest [...]

Turning the tables on Verizon…

Monday, March 23rd, 2009

For anyone who’s ever called Verizon (VZ) to complain about something like slow download speeds or oddly high bills (speaking from personal experience, naturally) and not exactly been greeted with a sympathetic ear, have we got an SEC filing for you! Last week, Verizon, filed this amended proxy which complained about this story in [...]